thanks John … I think the best thing, since we cannot never fully anticipate the future, is to work with ‘likely’ scenarios, and to have strategies that take into account contingencies that can go one way or another … The other thing is to be adaptive, and create a context for mutual alignment.

You can reach me at gmail via michelsub2004 !

PG

where I struggle with this essay is its limited description of the context in which these ideas will become relevant. Because it seems to me that there are two very specific and very different ways of approaching our situation and that any proposal must identify with one or the other of those positions in order to be truly useful. The positions I am talking about are:

a) we are facing an imminent global ecological-social-economic crisis and we must do all we can to reorient ourselves in a more sustainable direction before this crisis destroys the coherence of human civilization and plunges us into some kind of post-apocalyptic situation characterized by wars great and small

b) we are facing an imminent global ecological-social-economic crisis and we must do all we can to prepare ourselves to build a more sustainable society after this crisis destroys the coherence of existing economic systems, to avoid the complete collapse of civilization into some kind of post-apocalyptic situation

And it seems to me that the zero-growth economy being proposed here is being discussed as if it could arise within the context of a), whereas I think it is more realistically a description of aspects of a plan for b). But if one is going to plan for b) then you can’t just ignore the chaotic context in which these ideas would need to be implemented. John Robb’s blog on resilient communities is an example of someone self-consciously planning for b) with a constructive social mandate (as opposed to the survivalists who are planning for b) but are only out for themselves) yet who is always carefully considering context.

My own preference is to work towards a), but in a pre-crisis world ideas like those described in this essay, while appealing, are simply too extreme to be likely to gain any significant real-world traction. At least not enough to derail our ecocidal agenda, which must be our first economic and technological priority. So although I am drawn to new p2p possibilities, my feeling is that such economies must be rooted in a description of realistic transformative possibilities rather than proposing pie-in-the-sky futures like a post-capitalist zero-growth world that somehow just appears out of nowhere within a still coherent ecosystem. I do believe we can get to post-capitalism – I believe we must get there – but just describing what it will be like when we are all living in self-determining sustainable villages is not a solution. That’s why I like the work you are doing which is focused on practices at last as much as ideas. And in my own way I am trying to do that as well.

Dear PG, these distinctions would make an excellent blogpost, could you possible elaborate them in a somewhat longer form, for republication?

Michel

Today’s economies can continue to grow with activities that are at most a bit resource using, but not resource depletiing: services, to be exact. Our technological base allows for much more artists, elder carers, education and health professionals, urban recuperation, scientists, cultural heritage maintainers, etc.

Furthermore, there are three types of resources to be considered: energy, materials and information. Energy is always depleted if used but the limits of available energy are uncertain. Maybe there are oil resources of geological nature to be tapped. We don’t know which are the limits of collecting solar energy, if cheap collectors and converters to hydrocarbons are discovered, or which are the limits in geothermal energy. If nuclear fusion can be made to work, then the limits are very, very large.

Some materials face depletion, but with enough energy it is always possible to recycle them. Bio originated materials could replace many others which have become or are scarce.

The third resource is information and knowledge. This cannot be depleted and has a potential infinite growth. The problem is that it can be made artificially scarce and its growth restrained. So, I would say that the evident resource restriction that could impose zero economic growth is not energy, materials or information scarcity, but scarcity of (collective) intelligence.